Schumer demands public hearing on what Trump ‘might have committed’ to Putin

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is demanding Republicans convene a public hearing on any deal made between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at their recent summit in Helsinki.

“Our Republican colleagues need to join us in demanding testimony from the president’s national security team that was in Helsinki and we need to do that immediately ... to assess what President Trump might have committed to President Putin in secret,” Schumer said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

“You can’t assume anything -- but that as weak as he was in public before President Putin, he was even worse in private," Schumer added. "Why else did he not want anyone else in the room?”

A spokesman for Schumer later said that the senator wants Republicans to convene a public hearing and not a closed-door briefing, which typically involves all senators.

The call for a public hearing is one of many demands Schumer is making in the wake of the Helsinki summit.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will testify before Congress to discuss Russia next week, the Republican chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee told reporters on Tuesday.

U.S. Senator Bob Corker did not give a specific date for the hearing, which comes after U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday. Representatives for the State Department had no immediate comment on the congressional hearing.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday accused President Trump of committing treason during the president's meeting a day earlier with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

“I agree with John Brennan, who said that it was nothing short of treasonous,” Hoyer told reporters in the Capitol, referring to the former CIA director.

“It is the duty of every patriot who loves their country to stand up and speak out against this dangerous and dishonest behavior,” he added. “The emperor has no clothes, no ethics, no integrity, no common sense.”

With his comments, Hoyer became the highest-ranking Democratic lawmaker to accuse Trump of treason against the country he leads. But Hoyer also stopped short of urging impeachment hearings against the president, as some liberal members of the Democratic Caucus have been urging for months.

President Trump caved to an onslaught of bipartisan criticism Tuesday, walking back his embrace of Vladimir Putin and claiming he misspoke when he said he couldn’t see “any reason” why Russia would have interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

Trump made the acknowledgement during a brief appearance at the White House ahead of a closed-door meeting with Republican leaders.

At a press conference in Helsinki, Finland on Monday, Trump — standing side-by-side with Putin — put his trust in the Russian leader’s denial of meddling in the 2016 election while openly questioning his own intelligence community’s findings on the matter.

Adding:

New York Times: Trump Now Says He Accepts U.S. Intelligence Reports on Russian Election Meddling

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) is renewing his call for President Trump to release his tax returns after the president's controversial press conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week.

Sanford told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa on Tuesday that he doesn’t know if Putin has any compromising information on Trump, but said he wants more information about Trump’s finances in light of the president's comments while standing alongside Putin the previous day. ...

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) blasted Trump's press conference as “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory,” while a former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee called Trump's actions "shocking."

Trump was the first presidential candidate in decades to not disclose his tax returns, citing an IRS audit, though the agency has said that taxpayers can release their own information at any time. The president has suggested that he may not release them until he leaves office.

Senator Calls For Hearing With U.S. Interpreter In Trump-Putin Meeting

WASHINGTON ― Nobody knows what President Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin in their private, two-hour meeting on Monday, after which he publicly trashed U.S. intelligence and praised the Russian dictator.

Well, almost nobody. At least one U.S. interpreter was in the room with the two leaders. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) says she wants to bring in that interpreter to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on what, exactly, Trump shared with Putin.

“That translator is an official of the U.S. government,” Shaheen told reporters Tuesday. “It is imperative that the American people and this Congress know precisely what the president shared or promised the Kremlin on our behalf.” ...

Shaheen, who is a member of the committee, is currently collecting signatures on a letter to the chairman, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), to request the hearing. ...

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he supports Shaheen’s push for a hearing.

Nobody in the GOP caucus moved to disclose Trump’s tax returns so we could better understand what financial shenanigans undergird his unusual affection for Putin. Nobody suggested hearings at which former Trump administration officials could be compelled to reveal what they know. They were clearly uncomfortable with the line Trump took but also uncomfortable with the idea of actual confrontation.

And after Trump finished speaking, he passed the baton to Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Brady, rather than responding with incredulity to Trump’s absurd statement, simply lauded his leadership and the concept of “peace through strength” before going on to talk about tax cuts.

Brady is one of the smarter and more policy-savvy members of the House, and I wouldn’t dream of insulting his intelligence by suggesting that he actually found Trump’s presentation persuasive. But it was good enough for Brady to feel comfortable continuing to ignore the elephant (or, perhaps, bear) in the room and move on to the GOP’s overriding goal of helping rich people have more money.

That’s been the basic deal between Trump and the congressional party since Election Day. The message of Tuesday’s statement was that the deal still holds.

“The president needs to understand he has damaged U.S. foreign policy,” Representative Mike Turner, a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. “He’s given them a pass and is certainly not holding them accountable for what they’re doing.”

Some lawmakers said they would seek remedies in Congress.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake, a longtime Trump critic, has raised the idea of passing a resolution that would voice lawmakers’ support for the U.S. intelligence community and U.S. allies, many of who are feeling the sting of strong Trump criticism in recent weeks.

Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations panel, has floated a resolution similar to Flake’s.

Several senators, including Republican Ben Sasse, Republican Pat Toomey, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, have backed more sanctions on Russia, but it was unclear whether Senate or House of Representatives leaders would support such a move or how new sanctions might be crafted.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, calling Russia’s government “menacing,” said he was willing to consider additional sanctions on Russia, and reiterated his support for U.S. intelligence community findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Makes a bigly professional impression upon the Russian president and the international diplomatic community. Noone will want to make a final deal with this dotus - ohh great deal is not valid - I just misspoke while signing.

The president will never understand that he has damaged U.S. foreign policy. The oath he took never meant anything to him. He is only interested in how something affects him and his pocketbook. Nothing else and no one else matters.

The president will never understand that he has damaged U.S. foreign policy. The oath he took never meant anything to him. He is only interested in how something affects him and his pocketbook. Nothing else and no one else matters.

1,000 times.

"I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully"
--- George W Bush

“This Was the Nightmare Scenario”: The West Wing Revolts After Trump Embraces Putin

As he flew home from Helsinki on Air Force One following his disastrous press conference with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reacted with surprise at the horror and outrage that was being expressed by much of the American political world. By the time he landed, the surprise had turned to anger. “He was enraged there was a lack of people out there defending him,” one Republican close to the White House told me. The mood among West Wing advisers was downright funereal. “This was the nightmare scenario,” another Republican in frequent contact with the administration said.

Trump had weathered epic crises of his own making before, from the Access Hollywood tape to Charlottesville to “shithole countries.” Each time he survived withering criticism by doubling down and counterattacking. But as he woke up Tuesday morning, Trump had to recognize that his embrace of Putin on the world stage was a crisis of a different magnitude, and he personally stepped in to try to manage the fallout.

While National Security Adviser John Bolton, according to a source, thought Trump’s remarks were ill-advised, he believed that walking them back would only add fuel to the outrage pyre and make the president look weak. But Chief of Staff John Kelly was irate. According to a source, he told Trump it would make things worse for him with Robert Mueller. He also exerted pressure to try to get the president to walk back his remarks. According to three sources familiar with the situation, Kelly called around to Republicans on Capitol Hill and gave them the go-ahead to speak out against Trump. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan held televised press conferences to assert that Russia did meddle in the election. ...

To those who know Trump best, the 24-hour reversal is a sign that he’s unnerved by the intensity of the backlash he provoked. “The president sent a very clear message [that] his worldview is in sync with his base and members of his party,” former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told me. “Any of these other kerfuffles, if he had addressed it the next day, we wouldn’t have had that many days of things like s-hole countries.”

US offers no details as Russia claims Trump and Putin reached military agreements

Washington (CNN) Russia announced it was ready to pursue agreements reached by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump "in the sphere of international security," though the White House and Pentagon would not confirm any agreements had been made or offer any details.

Trump and Putin met for about two hours during their summit in Helsinki with only translators present. It is still not clear what the two men discussed or agreed to during their meeting.

"The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is ready for practical implementation of the agreements reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in the sphere of international security achieved at the Helsinki summit," Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a Russian military spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday.

The Russian military "is ready to intensify contacts with the US colleagues in the General Staff and other available channels to discuss the extension of the START treaty, cooperation in Syria, as well as other issues of ensuring military security," Konashenkov said.

The National Security Council would not confirm what Trump had agreed to in the one-on-one with Putin. A spokesman for the NSC told CNN on Tuesday that they were still "reviewing the discussion."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Wednesday called Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election a “9/11 level” national emergency.

His comment comes days after President Trump appeared to side with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his denial that Russia interfered in the election, comments Trump sought to walk back on Tuesday.

"We are in a 9/11 level national emergency because our country is under attack," Blumenthal said during an appearance Wednesday on CNN's "New Day."

“Literally, that attack is ongoing and pervasive, verified by objected and verifiable evidence.” ...

The Democratic senator also called for the American translator present during Trump's private meeting with Putin on Monday to tell Congress what was said during the encounter, a demand echoed by several other Democrats.

“Issue a subpoena, not only for the translator and the notes, but also for the national security team that debriefed the president about these supposed agreements in the sphere of international security,” Blumenthal said.

It’s unlikely that anyone remembers that moment in Blue Ash—a moment that would be an enduring stain on any other President—and the reason is obvious: Trump’s penchant for bald deception and incoherence is not an aberration. It is his daily practice. The vague sense of torpor and gloom that so many Americans have shouldered these past two years derives precisely from the constancy of Trump’s galling statements and actions.

Trump’s performances in Europe, and now in Washington, clarified nothing. They only raised dark suspicions and aroused the sickening feeling that we are living in the pages of the most lurid espionage novel ever written. Robert Mueller and his investigators may never get to the end of the mysteries that they are exploring. They may never get to the end of the myriad corruptions, furtive connections, and double-dealings. But the collection of guilty pleas and indictments that have resulted are not to be dismissed.

Over and over, Trump has said that it’s a “good thing, not a bad thing” that the United States has a “good relationship” with Putin. And it is true that American Presidents have always met with adversaries. George Bush and Barack Obama both had the pleasure, on repeated occasions, of Putin’s acquaintance. But summit meetings are not a matter of exchanging friendship rings. They are matters of asserting and arguing interests, in finding hard-fought areas of agreement and progress; they demand patient preparation (which Trump refuses) and principle (which Trump lacks). Anything less courts confusion, misunderstanding, and even disaster. That was true in Singapore, and it was true in Helsinki.

At the press conference in Helsinki, Trump proved himself, at best, a heedless amateur, blind to the bogus arguments and offers being made by a shrewd adversary. “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today, and what he did is an incredible offer,” Trump said. “He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the twelve [Russian intelligence officers who were indicted by Mueller]. I think that’s an incredible offer.” Incredible is the word, and not just for the offer. Trump’s incredible journey to Europe was an act contrary to the interests of his country. Now we will see who, particularly in the Republican Party, will stand up not to applaud the Great Leader but to find the capacity to say what is obvious and what is true.